Harold Pinter - en litterær førtidspensionist

min medfølelse går til den hæderlige og
skarpsindige Knut Ahnlund:
The Nobel Prize in Literature goes to: A Bush-hating leftist!
by Stephen Schwartz

SWEDEN HAS A REPUTATION for a high suicide rate. But a psychological crackup striking an ordinary Scandinavian, brooding in the long, dark winter, is merely a personal tragedy. By contrast, the moral suicide of a whole institution, like the Swedish Academy--which has responsibility for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature--is messier and more disturbing.
Yet like a pack of lemmings drunk on home-made aquavit, the Stockholm snobs have continued their rush to fully discredit the literature Nobels, by selecting Harold Pinter as their 2005 laureate. Pinter is an exhausted English playwright whose sole and obvious current qualification for the prize is his strident participation in the America-baiting, Israel-hating protests against the liberation of Iraq.
Pinter himself admitted that his career no longer has anything to do with literary aspirations. Notified of his good fortune, since the prize includes a $1.3 million payout, he snarled today, "I have written 29 plays and I think that's really enough. I think the world has had enough of my plays." He then declared that he has given up playwriting altogether.
Given that Pinter has produced no significant work for the stage in 40 years, one should perhaps admire the candor of his self-criticism. But viewed from another perspective, the Swedes have written a new chapter in ignobility, presenting the world's top literary honor to an author who considers his own work irrelevant. That, at least, could not be said of some of the anti-democracy miscreants previously so recognized in Stockholm.
They have included the 1999 choice, German novelist Gunter Grass, a veteran of the Nazi forces in the Second World War and unsparing foe of Western values; the 1998 laureate, the Portuguese Jose Saramago, a former Communist censor, and his immediate predecessor Dario Fo, a tireless enemy of religion. Some have never forgiven the ignominious past selection of Pablo Neruda, a fervent Stalinist and clandestine agent for the Soviet secret police. But, at the very least, none of those puffers and fakes would have disclaimed the importance of their writerly efforts.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/208tcruy.asp

DANIEL PIPES:
En amerikansk løsning på Europas muslimske problem?
Amerikanske muslimer er bedre uddannet og har bedre levestandard end gennemsnittet - og betragter deres land som umoralsk.
Af Daniel Pipes
Undersøgelser af Europas muslimer viser til stadighed, at denne befolkningsgruppe er dybt fremmedgjort fra værtssamfundene. De forskellige forsøg på at forklare, hvorfor det forholder sig sådan, peger uvægerligt på muslimernes sociale patologi - arbejdsløshed, fattigdom, kriminalitet, stoffer o. lign. Blandt løsningerne indgår forslag, om at muslimer skal lære europæiske sprog, integreres socialt, nyde godt af ligestillingstiltag samt forsøg på at få værtsbefolkningerne til at udvise en mere imødekommende holdning til deres muslimske naboer.
Således har det britiske indenrigsministerium foreslået, at indvandrede religiøse ledere kun skal have lov at prædike, hvis de taler engelsk og demonstrerer kendskab til sådanne emner som det parlamentariske demokrati, skattesystemet, antidiskriminationslovene, de borgerlige rettigheder, immigrationens udvikling, landets forfatning og de lokale myndigheders rolle. - - På samme måde forlanger de franske myndigheder, at imamer taler fransk og kender landets historie, samfundsforhold og kultur. I et forsøg på at komme den påståede "islamofobi" til livs tilbyder regeringerne til gengæld muslimer forskellige privilegier, og de gør sig store anstrengelser for at fremstille islam i et positivt lys.
Der er utvivlsomt en vis logik i den opfattelse, at uoplyste, fremmedgjorte og fattige muslimske befolkninger er særligt modtagelige for islamistiske budskaber. Men kan man deraf slutte, at oplyste, integrerede og økonomisk velstillede muslimer er mere loyale?
Ikke nødvendigvis......................................................
http://www.sappho.dk/Pipes.htm